The Experience Miracles Podcast

The Lasting Effects of Birth Trauma & Intervention in our Kids

Jan 23, 2024

Birth Trauma in Children

Episode 4 — Experience Miracles Podcast | Host: Dr. Tony Ebel, DC, CACCP — Pediatric Chiropractor & Founder of PX Docs | Published: January 23, 2024 | Duration: 52 min

Key Takeaways

  • Birth trauma — caused by c-sections, forceps, vacuum extraction, and breech deliveries — is the single most overlooked trigger of nervous system dysfunction in children. In Dr. Tony Ebel’s clinical experience across millions of patients, 85–90% of children with autism, ADHD, anxiety, or chronic illness have a history of birth trauma.
  • Physical injury to the neck and brainstem during birth immediately triggers subluxation — a state of neurological dysfunction where the upper cervical spine and brainstem get locked into sympathetic fight-or-flight mode. In infants, this shows up as colic, reflux, chronic ear infections, and sleep problems.
  • The Vagus Nerve (cranial nerve 10) physically routes through the neck and is directly damaged by birth trauma. Since the vagus nerve controls digestion, immune regulation, emotional regulation, and sleep, vagal dysfunction explains why so many children with birth trauma histories develop compounding health challenges.
  • A peer-reviewed systematic review and meta-analysis found that children born via cesarean delivery have increased odds of autism spectrum disorder and ADHD compared with children born vaginally. A second major study confirmed that forceps and suction deliveries were strongly correlated with autism and sensory processing disorder.
  • Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care — specifically the neuro-tonal adjustments used by PX Docs — is the most direct clinical intervention for addressing subluxation and restoring vagal tone. Dr. Ebel performed two to three adjustments per day on his own son Oliver while he was in the NICU, observing real-time improvements in blood pressure and oxygen saturation during each session.

What Is Birth Trauma, and Why Does It Affect Your Child’s Nervous System?

Birth trauma is physical injury to a baby’s neck, brainstem, cranial system, and upper cervical spine that occurs during delivery — particularly during interventions like c-sections, forceps, vacuum extraction, or prolonged labor in breech position. The neck is the most unprotected part of a newborn’s body, and the forces applied during assisted deliveries directly stress the most neurologically critical region in the body.

When the upper cervical spine and brainstem sustain this kind of injury, the nervous system responds immediately with what Dr. Tony Ebel calls sympathetic dominance — a protective fight-or-flight response that, in an infant, becomes stuck on. The brainstem is the control center for the autonomic nervous system, governing digestion, sleep, immune function, and stress regulation. When it is dysregulated at birth — during the most neuroplastic window of a child’s life — that dysfunction becomes hardwired into the nervous system’s baseline.

The Vagus Nerve is the key link between birth trauma and the chronic health conditions parents see in their children. As cranial nerve 10, the vagus nerve physically passes through the neck on its way from the brainstem to the heart, lungs, stomach, and gut. Birth trauma injures this nerve at the point where it is most vulnerable. Because the vagus nerve governs the parasympathetic rest-and-digest response — including emotional regulation, immune modulation, and gut health — vagal dysfunction explains why children with birth trauma histories develop cascading, seemingly unrelated conditions.

For parents who have exhausted conventional medicine, dietary interventions, and therapy without getting to the root cause, birth trauma is almost always the missing piece of the conversation.

Why Birth Trauma Is the Most Overlooked Trigger of Childhood Chronic Illness [0:53 – 11:07]

Dr. Tony Ebel, DC, CACCP: I’m just going to call it with this one. This is the most important episode. This is the most important topic that I think I can share with you — whether you are a parent, another provider, all of us.

All of the other things contributing to chronic illness and chronic challenges in our kids — which are at a higher rate than ever before, whether we’re talking autism, ADHD, or asthma — they’re all part of the conversation. We call that The Perfect Storm. The whole theory of the Perfect Storm concept is that it’s a multitude of things in sequence: stressors, toxins that our kids are exposed to early in life. Conception, pregnancy, birth intervention. And that’s this one.

The reason I say this is the most important episode is because I’ve been in this world with a specialty in autism, epilepsy, seizures, and chronic illness in kids, and I know that very few people at all are talking about birth trauma. The word we’re going to put into synonymous terms today is birth intervention — c-sections, forceps, vacuum induction — and we’re going to deep dive into the lifelong lasting effects.

This conversation is my favorite and least favorite at the same time to provide to parents. It’s my favorite because you deserve to know this. No other doctors, no other professionals — very few people on Instagram, on Google, on anywhere — are talking about this. Everybody on the standard medical side of the fence still blames genetics for autism, ADHD, and so forth. Even though these are neurological disorders. Even though we clearly know the underpinning of autism, ADHD, and seizures is an overstressed, dysfunctional nervous system.

On the other side of the fence, the natural health and functional world — which I bet most of our listeners are well versed in — you have gone deep down the rabbit holes. Gluten, dairy, glyphosate, red dye 40, tongue ties, airway obstructions, low tone, high tone. You’ve gone down every road possible looking for the root cause. And when we really talk about root causes, I’m going to introduce another word: what triggered it? What actually caused and first triggered that Perfect Storm?

After 15-plus years of doing this work, taking tens of thousands of case histories, then teaching thousands of other PX Docs to take these case histories and seeing the same statistical correlation — and then spending hundreds, probably thousands, of hours pouring into the research — birth intervention and trauma is the original, primary trigger.

“Kids don’t grow out of colic and chronic ear infections and constipation. They grow into missed milestones, developmental delays, autism, ADHD, and anxiety — and all of that Perfect Storm sequence starts somewhere.”

Let me tell you how I explain this when I’m in the back of an Uber or sitting next to someone on a plane. And I’ve done this so many times — because after just three minutes of this conversation, every Uber driver and every airplane passenger has said to me: Oh my gosh, that makes so much sense. How come nobody else is talking about this?

Millions of babies are being pulled out by a gigantic-pliers forceps, a plunger-like vacuum extractor, or by hands during a c-section — and we are yanking, twisting, pulling, and physically injuring infants’ necks at birth. We would never do that to a person one minute later, one year later. Nobody would yank, twist, and pull on someone else’s head and neck. That’s called trauma. That’s called getting arrested. And every one of us knows that for infants, their head and neck are exactly what they cannot move and cannot protect on their own.

The Research: Birth Interventions Directly Linked to Autism, ADHD, and Sensory Disorders [11:07 – 20:10]

Years ago we started to track this in our clinic. When we take a case history on our patients, we don’t just do it as a procedure. Every single patient, we sit down knee to knee with parents and take a deep dive case history. And 85 to 90% of the time — or more — when a child has autism, ADHD, or anxiety, they have birth trauma behind them. I got my start in this neuro-focused world taking care of teenagers who were 17, 18, 19, young adults of 21 with epilepsy, Asperger’s, and ADHD — six medications, seven medications, eight medications, every therapy, every diet change tried. Parents were coming to us as a last resort.

The reason we were the last resort and the first to help is because we were the first to talk to them about birth trauma. For those kids, 19 years prior, this storm, this neurological imbalance, had been triggered and had been brewing the whole time — and we were the first ones to name it.

Now here’s the research. The first study is titled: Incidence of Pre-, Peri-, and Post-Natal Birth and Developmental Problems of Children with Sensory Processing Disorder and Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. This is one of my favorite studies because they literally researched our Perfect Storm concept — prenatal challenges, perinatal factors during pregnancy, and postnatal events at and after birth — and their relationship with sensory disorders and autism. Here’s a key finding:

Rates of breech position, cord wrap, prolapse, and assisted delivery methods — particularly forceps and suction deliveries — were strongly correlated with autism and with sensory processing disorder later in life.

The second study is titled: Association of Cesarean Delivery with Risk of Neurodevelopmental and Psychiatric Disorders in the Offspring: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. Here’s what it found: compared with children born by vaginal delivery, children born via cesarean delivery had increased odds of autism spectrum disorder and ADHD.

“They are yanking, twisting, and pulling on our kids’ necks, their brainstem, their cranial system, their spinal cord, their cervical spine. The most unprotected part of their body is the one injured during birth.”

I also want to address something in that second study’s title — it calls autism a “psychiatric disorder.” Autism is not rooted in psychiatry. Autism ends up affecting socialization, communication, and emotional-behavioral regulation in the brain. But autism is triggered by the physical and neurological events we’re talking about in the central and autonomic nervous system. Getting the framework wrong is why so much research ends up at the wrong outcomes.

And one more note: the WHO states that c-sections should only occur about 10% of the time. Every birth intervention we’ve discussed has been shown by medical research to be overused. We have medicalized birth, and we’ve turned it into a business.

What Happens to a Baby’s Nervous System During Birth Trauma: Subluxation and Sympathetic Dominance [20:10 – 34:36]

So why is birth intervention neurologically so consequential? Here’s the sequence.

The physical trauma — the strain, tension, torsion, and tissue damage — happens when forceps, breech, cord wrap, or c-section occurs. That physical injury immediately triggers what’s called a sympathetic fight-or-flight protective response. God gave us this response to protect us and maintain life when physical injury happens. Think about what happens when you sleep funny on your neck. Does it immediately loosen up? Are you easily irritable, emotional, anxious? Do you struggle to focus, sleep, or feel fatigued?

That’s mild neck tension in an adult — and it affects your entire functioning. Birth trauma is a much bigger deal. Lifelong and lasting for kids, altering their entire gross motor development, cerebellar function, vagus nerve regulation, and autonomic function.

The neck is the hub. Nervous system regulation occurs in the brainstem — the air traffic control region for the entire central and autonomic nervous system. The first thing that happens with birth trauma is something called subluxation of the cranial system and, most importantly, the upper cervical spine and brainstem region.

Subluxation may be the first time you’re hearing that term. It’s a Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic term. It means neurological dysfunction. The neuro-spinal system — the nerves, muscles, ligaments, and joints — gets stuck in this sympathetic fight-or-flight response.

So when you hear us talk about subluxation: stress mode, stuck on. Sympathetic fight-or-flight, stress mode, stuck on. Just put all the S’s together.

It gets stuck there because a baby is at their most plastic stage. Neuroplasticity is the science of all of our work. At this stage, the nervous system is going to be programmed — either for ease, because there was no birth trauma, no toxins, no stress — and that child will relax, sleep, eat, latch easily, roll over on both sides, and reach milestones on time. Or it will be programmed for dysfunction, because subluxation in the upper neck triggered the sympathetic fight-or-flight response to get stuck on.

“An upper cervical brainstem subluxation causes both at the same time — excessive sympathetic response and insufficient vagal tone. And that’s why it’s the biggest deal you’ve never heard about. That’s why it’s the biggest missing link in every conversation from autism to epilepsy to asthma.”

That stuck-on state is your colicky, fussy, can’t-sleep, can’t-soothe baby. That’s your chronic ear infections, reflux, grumpy, uncomfortable, screaming baby. Moms and dads, you know your child is struggling right away when these early life components of the Perfect Storm and birth trauma come into play.

So even though your doctors dismissed it, this episode is taking you back to that mom-and-dad gut instinct that says: something’s wrong. They should sleep easier, they should soothe better, they should be more relaxed. When you innately know something’s off and your pediatrician says, don’t worry, they’ll grow out of it — kids don’t grow out of colic, chronic ear infections, and constipation. They grow into missed milestones, developmental delays, autism, ADHD, and anxiety.

The Vagus Nerve: The Missing Piece in Your Child’s Health [34:36 – 39:27]

Our nervous system has two modes of operation: the gas pedal — sympathetic, fight-or-flight — and the brake pedal. The brake pedal is controlled by the most important nerve in the entire body: the Vagus Nerve. Vagus, V-A-G-U-S. Nicknamed the wandering nerve.

The vagus nerve is cranial nerve 10. It physically routes from the brainstem and cranial system down to the heart, lungs, stomach, and gut — all the way down to the lower abdomen — and also back up to our eyes, brain, and mouth. It’s the parasympathetic, rest-relaxation-regulation side of the nervous system. And here’s the critical thing: because the vagus nerve anatomically routes through the neck, birth trauma injures it at its most vulnerable point.

The vagus nerve is 85% sensory — it’s a gigantic sensory receptor satellite that reports what’s happening throughout the body back to the brain. It regulates our social-emotional status, our gut-brain connection, our immune response, our inflammatory response, and our speech and motor tone. Damage to the vagus nerve is the number one overlooked cause of autism.

So with birth trauma, two things happen simultaneously. First, it triggers an excessive sympathetic fight-or-flight response — your child is stuck on the gas pedal. If that persists, you get an ADHD raging-bull kiddo. You get a stemming, stressed-out, anxious child with autism-anxiety challenges. Seizures are an excessive sympathetic response paired with an insufficient vagal brake to keep the brain from seizing.

Second, vagal nerve tone drops — the brake pedal doesn’t work. The vagus nerve, if your child has tried everything for sleep and it hasn’t fully resolved — the vagus nerve is the key. If you’ve cleaned up the diet and done every gut protocol but full gut-brain healing hasn’t come — the vagus nerve is the key. If your child is still inflamed and sick all the time despite cleaning up every toxin — the vagus nerve is the key to their immune system. If speech and motor tone are still off track despite OT, PT, and speech therapy — the cranial nerves, upper cervical nerves, and the vagus nerve are the key.

We want our children to shift into gas pedal mode when they’re playing baseball, out at recess, running around outside — and then immediately regulate back to the rest-and-digest side for sleeping, eating, concentrating, and socializing. That fluid switching is all done by the vagus nerve. When birth trauma disrupts that function at the most neuroplastic moment of a child’s life, it affects everything.

The Perfect Storm: From Birth Intervention to Autism, ADHD, and Anxiety [39:27 – 43:00]

So here is the shortest version of The Perfect Storm sequence I can walk you through. Was there a pre-wiring from a stressful pregnancy or difficult fertility journey? Very often, yes — a mom’s nervous system stuck in sympathetic dominance during pregnancy shares that state with the baby through the umbilical cord. That’s the prenatal factor.

Then birth intervention happens. Brainstem and vagus nerve damage. Subluxation gets locked in. And from there: difficulty latching, chronic ear infections, antibiotics, gross motor delays, fine motor delays, speech delays, social-emotional regulation challenges, tantrums, meltdowns, and eventually an autism, ADHD, or anxiety diagnosis. That is the perfect storm, from beginning to end.

But where does it all begin? What was the original primary trigger? This is the obsession of our work as chiropractors. DC stands for Doctor of Chiropractic on our degrees, but it stands for Doctor of Cause. To know about this is to have studied it and dedicated your entire career to it.

I didn’t learn this in school. I had two post-doctorate certifications, an undergrad degree, a doctorate, and nobody told me about birth trauma, upper cervical dysautonomia, or any of this. You know who told me? You — the moms and dads I sat knee to knee with, taking case histories.

My first mentor, Dr. Mike Cody — I miss him, he’s in heaven — told me early in my career: “If you really want to do your job as a chiropractor and find the cause of why your patients are so sick, you need to shut up and listen to their moms. Go all the way back through the case history, especially pregnancy, especially labor and delivery.” And he was already onto it. He started to teach me this work, and I took it and ran with it.

Listening to moms is how we found these answers.

What PX Docs Chiropractors Do About Birth Trauma: Clinical Protocols [43:00 – 45:43]

There’s a very specific kind of chiropractor — a PX Doc and a nervous system-focused pediatric chiropractor — who has the training to not just take these case histories and draw clinical correlations. It’s one thing to know about it. It’s a whole other thing to be trained in the clinical protocols, the technology, the care plans, and the very specific Neuro-Tonal Adjustments that activate the vagus nerve, release tension from the sympathetic nervous system, restore balance to the Autonomic Nervous System, and reorganize the neurological pathways and neurodevelopmental milestones that got off track.

When we begin working with kids who are locked into autism, epilepsy, or severe neurological challenges, the first goals are foundational: sleep better, eat better, have a better functioning digestive system, regulate the immune system, reduce inflammation, and then improve motor function. The upper cervical spine, brainstem, and cerebellum work together to regulate all motor tone and coordination. So if you’ve taken your child to every OT, PT, and speech therapist and haven’t gotten full results, it all comes back to subluxation and birth trauma.

And until you have this kind of pediatric chiropractor, there is no other intervention that is as directly and as potently able to address subluxation. There are ways to stimulate the vagus nerve — and we’ll cover those in other episodes and interviews. But for a child who had physically traumatic birth trauma, nothing is as neurologically potent as a nervous system-focused adjustment.

“The vagus nerve is the boss of our health. If this episode is the first time you’re learning about the vagus nerve — from this moment on, I want you to become obsessed with learning everything you can about it. Its role in digestion, emotional regulation, immune modulation — it’s essential, crucial, and central to every facet of our health.”

Oliver’s Story: Treating Birth Trauma in the NICU [49:33 – 51:57]

I want to close with something personal, because I think it matters that you know I’m not just talking about this from the outside.

I literally watched my own son’s birth trauma unfold after studying it every single night and weekend for three years straight. Oliver had brain damage on his MRI. He had seizures — we watched them. They were on his EEG. He had the worst findings on MRI and the worst findings on EEG. Medically, his prognosis was the worst you could get.

But I had watched his birth trauma happen. So I went right to work.

I made two to three adjustments per day while Oliver was in the NICU to activate his vagus nerve and release tension from his sympathetic nervous system. And while Oliver was hooked up to those machines, I could literally watch his blood pressure come down in real time. As you turn the vagus nerve on and the sympathetics come down, blood pressure relaxes. His biggest challenges were cardiopulmonary — and I could see his oxygen saturation numbers go up during his adjustments. The nurses would come around and watch.

Did the doctors take time to understand birth trauma, dysautonomia, and subluxation? No. Not yet. But our prayer and our plan with the PX Docs network is to reach you first — moms and dads, you’re the ones who need this. Your kids are the ones struggling.

It’s not that anyone in medicine has bad intentions. It’s a lack of knowledge. A lack of awareness that birth trauma is this significant. That it isn’t just augmentation, it isn’t just intervention — it is brainstem damage and injury to the vagus nerve and the autonomic nervous system. And until that is found and handled, that child will struggle.

All healing starts with, and stays with, the nervous system. Our kids are designed to be healthy. Our kids are designed to heal. They need their nervous system perfectly balanced and on track to do that.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can birth trauma cause autism or ADHD?

Yes, according to multiple peer-reviewed studies and the clinical data Dr. Tony Ebel has gathered across tens of thousands of case histories. A systematic review and meta-analysis found that children born via cesarean delivery have increased odds of autism spectrum disorder and ADHD compared with those born vaginally. A second major study found that forceps and suction deliveries were strongly correlated with autism and sensory processing disorder. In Dr. Ebel’s clinical experience, 85–90% of children with autism, ADHD, or anxiety have a birth trauma history.

What is subluxation and what does it have to do with birth trauma?

Subluxation is neurological dysfunction of the neuro-spinal system — specifically, the nerves, muscles, ligaments, and joints of the upper cervical spine and brainstem getting locked into a sympathetic fight-or-flight response. Birth trauma is the most common cause of subluxation in children. When an infant’s neck is stressed during delivery and subluxation occurs during the most neuroplastic window of their life, the nervous system can become hardwired into stress mode, causing colic, sleep problems, chronic ear infections, constipation, and eventually missed developmental milestones.

What is the vagus nerve and why does birth trauma damage it?

The Vagus Nerve is cranial nerve 10 — the most important nerve in the body — and it physically routes through the neck from the brainstem to the heart, lungs, stomach, and gut. Because of this anatomical path, birth trauma directly injures the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve controls the parasympathetic rest-and-digest response: digestion, immune regulation, sleep, emotional regulation, and anti-inflammatory function. Vagal damage from birth trauma is, according to Dr. Tony Ebel, the number one overlooked root cause of autism.

How do I know if my child’s health challenges are connected to birth trauma?

Common indicators include a history of c-section, forceps, vacuum extraction, breech position, or cord wrap during birth, combined with early-life symptoms like colic, reflux, chronic ear infections, constipation, latching difficulties, or poor sleep. As children grow, these often progress into gross motor delays, speech delays, sensory issues, emotional regulation challenges, and diagnoses of autism, ADHD, or anxiety. If you’ve worked through conventional medicine and functional health approaches without getting to a root cause, birth trauma is likely part of the conversation.

What is the difference between a regular chiropractor and a PX Docs pediatric chiropractor?

A PX Docs pediatric chiropractor is specifically trained in the clinical protocols, neurological scanning technology (including INSiGHT Scans), care plans, and Neuro-Tonal Adjustments designed to address subluxation, activate the vagus nerve, and restore autonomic nervous system balance. Standard chiropractic training does not cover this. PX Docs chiropractors are trained to identify the neurological imprint of birth trauma in children of all ages — from newborns to teenagers — and to work on the underlying cause, not the symptoms.

How do I find a PX Docs chiropractor near me?

Visit the PX Docs Directory and search by city, region, or zip code to find a trained, nervous system-focused pediatric chiropractor near you.

Resources & Related Content

Find A PX Doc

Welcome to PX Docs. The place to find Hope. Answers. Hope. for you and your family.